VirusHead

I’m traveling in my beloved New England this week! It’s unseasonably hot during the day.

It’s also a little too early for the leaf-peepers – that’s a good thing.

I arrived at Boston airport without incident (flying Delta this time!). I picked up my rental – a lemon-yellow PT Cruiser convertible – and headed straight to North Providence to my brother Roy’s house. The highways were a little scary, but my highway phobia problem is much less bothersome when I’m the one driving. There were no sudden expansions into too many lanes, and no spaghetti-like junctions. It also doesn’t hurt that everybody is going 65 or 70 (instead of 85 and 90 like they do in Atlanta). Whew.

Roy made a great chicken dinner, and my sister-in-law Patty’s parents came so that I could finally meet them. I hadn’t been able to attend Roy and Patty’s wedding because I was 8-1/2 months pregnant at the time, and the last time I was here, we all met at Uncle Ronnie and Aunt Ute’s house.

Roy and Patty are in a new house now. They have had to do a lot of remodeling because a pipe burst before they moved in. My nephew Dylan is still a little bit unsure about whether this is really “his” house yet.

Speaking of Dylan – awwwwwww. Just awwwwww. I’m having lots of fun playing with him. He is totally adorable. He is calling me “Auntie.”

My brother put up a big airbed for me – it’s a really strange sensation to sleep on it. The air is cold underneath, and I have a big quilt on top, and it somehow works out to be the perfect temperature. I have to distribute my weight a little carefully or I sink down in the middle. I’m sleeping kind of diagonally, but it’s really comfortable. It worked out the kink in my neck from the flight.

Yesterday Roy took the day off, and we went back to our hometown (Attleboro, Massachusetts) to see how things had changed or stayed the same. I was thrilled to see that they finally fixed the globe fountain at the front of Capron Park. Our old house had been redone and looked a lot better except that they had cut down all the trees and planted a bunch of frou-frou grasses and such out front. It didn’t exude that slightly ominous feeling anymore, though – that was reassuring to me.

One of my elementary schools and my middle school had been turned to other uses, but the high school looked pretty much the same, except for some clearly heightened security measures. Sigh.

Without speaking of it, we didn’t drive by the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

For lunch, we went to Willow Tree Chicken Farm. They make the best chicken salad in the entire world. We picked up a couple of sandwiches, and went to Slater Park to have a picnic.

We had the convertible’s top down and, as we drove into the park, Seals and Croft’s “Summer Breeze” was playing on the radio. Roy turned to me and said, “We’re in a movie, ‘Cruising with the N0rdb3rgz’” (excuse the slight warp there).

We laughed ourselves silly and were quite unreasonably happy and carefree.

We came back to the house and I prepared to go to Mary’s house in Cumberland, R.I. I haven’t seen her since at least 1982, and I was a little nervous.

How long have I known Mary? Here’s a clue:

Getting to her house wasn’t easy, either. She’s nestled in on a forested hill surrounded by farms – as I drove I saw signs for “Haunted Hill” and “haunted hayrides” and “homemade fudge.” The air smelled great. I got there a little bit early, and her husband was vacuuming. “Quit that vacuuming right now,” I shouted in, “I told you not to fuss.” Laughter greeted me.

Mary had quite a day. There was no air conditioning at work – that must have been a real drag (it’s really very hot outside) – but on the other hand, she had won $300 and a chance for Bon Jovi tickets on a radio station contest while she was driving into work.

She had a pork roast simmering in the crock pot all day, and made fresh apples with cinnamon to put on. Mmmmm.

She was just the same. Actually, she was different, too, like me, but her spirit, her “vibe,” was just the same.

It’s amazing to me sometimes that with some friends you can just pick up and have that same energy between you no matter how many years might have passed. With others, you want to run away screaming if you see them again – it’s like they’ve become strangers, and not ones you’d really want to get to know.

Mary made me feel welcome and completely at ease. We had a great, great time. I’ve got a photo of us, but I’ll have to post it later because I don’t have the camera connector with me. I met one of her sons – he’s 13, and very bubbly and funny like his mom. He showed me his two ferrets and sacrificed one of his blackberry grape drinks for me. I would have liked to have met their older son, too, but he was at work.

(More photos here)

We sat outside after dinner in their screened-in gazebo/tent thingie, and turned on some twink lights and talked about all kinds of things. Then we came in and had bakery-made strawberry shortcake for dessert (I think I might be gaining back that bit of weight that dropped off recently).

I drove back, and hung out with Patty until Roy got home from a work meeting. We had a little trouble getting Dylan to go to bed (that’s an understatement) but he went to bed right away once his Daddy got home. Maybe he was waiting for him.

So today I’m talked out and exhausted, but exhilarated too. I haven’t traveled alone since I was pregnant with Ben. I miss my family and my home, but… I really am having fun.

I have a cell phone now (my first one – I can’t think now why I was resisting it) and I’ve been talking with Ben and John every day. The very first day, Ben said, “I really wish that you wouldn’t have gone on this trip.” Nothing like a guilt-trip right away! (giggle). John’s swamped with all the responsibilities of teaching and writing and house stuff and Ben – but I think overall that’s probably a good thing. Moms, hear me.

He’s probably going to have to go to a department dinner later in the week, and we’re thinking of giving his ex a couple of chortles by asking her to babysit. Ben loves her.

This afternoon I’m going to Cranston to see another close girlfriend from my younger days. She changed her name to Kate but I keep forgetting and calling her Nicky or Nicolette (I love the name Nicolette). I don’t have much time to spare now, but we’re going to Borders for a cuppa and maybe I’ll pick up a book too. I haven’t read anything since I finished a novel on the plane. I’ve been using my iPod to get to sleep, but I am really used to reading for a while at bedtime, and I’m missing it.

Tomorrow I’m headed to Salem. I’m meeting Jan at the Witch Museum. She won’t step inside that “patriarchal propaganda tool for Judeo-Christianity” but I’ve never been to Salem in all these years, so I might get try to get there a little early and take a peek. I’m hoping that she’ll help me find a magic wand. I warned her that I want one that works – a teacher’s pointer with a rock on it, something like that (grinning).

I’ll be going to my cousin Aletta’s wedding on Sunday. It’s the reason for the season – I mean, for the trip. It’ll be a blast. She is going to ask the married women to whisper something in her ear, and I already know what I’m going to say. We’re all staying in Groton MA the night before the wedding.

There are a few other people I wanted to see on this trip, but I just don’t have time. Sigh.

I may not have another chance to blog this week, but I’ll be back Monday night. Hang in there everybody.

(Note: the photos were added on October 2)

50883

What is Mitt Romney’s position on torture?

See:
Romney, Torture and Teens
In right-wing Republican circles, abusive authoritarianism without due process is endemic – and profitable. By Maia Szalavitz

When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said he’d support doubling the size of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, he was trying to show voters that he’d be tough on terror. Two of his top fundraisers, however, have long supported using coercive tactics that have been likened to torture for troubled teenagers.

As the newspaper The Hill noted recently, 133 plaintiffs filed a civil suit against Romney’s Utah finance co-chair, Robert Lichfield, and his various business entities involved in residential treatment programs for adolescents. The umbrella group for his organization is the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS, sometimes known as WWASP). Lichfield is its founder and is on its board of directors.

The suit alleges that teens were locked in outdoor dog cages, exercised to exhaustion, deprived of food and sleep, exposed to extreme temperatures without adequate clothing or water, severely beaten, emotionally brutalized, and sexually abused and humiliated. Some were even made to eat their own vomit.

But the link to teen abuse goes far higher up in the Romney campaign. Romney’s national finance co-chair is a longtime friend of the Bush family named Mel Sembler. Sembler was campaign finance chair for the Republican party during the first election of George W. Bush, and a major fundraiser for his father.

Sembler currently heads the Scooter Libby Defense Fund, in addition to his work for Romney, and has worked tirelessly to keep the Vice President’s former Chief of Staff out of prison, even after his conviction on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Like Lichfield, Sembler also founded a nationwide network of treatment programs for troubled youth. Known as Straight, Inc., from 1976 to 1993 it variously operated nine programs in seven states. At all of Straight’s facilities, state investigators and/or civil lawsuits documented scores of abuses, including teens being bound, beaten, deprived of food and sleep for days, restrained by fellow youth for hours, sexually humiliated, abused and spat upon.

According to the L.A. Times, California investigators found that at Straight teens were “subjected to unusual punishment, infliction of pain, humiliation, intimidation, ridicule, coercion, threats, mental abuse… and interference with daily living functions such as eating, sleeping and toileting.”…

However, to this day there are at least eight programs operating that use Straight’s methods, often in former Straight buildings operated by former Straight staff. They include Alberta Adolescent Recovery Center (Canada), Pathway Family Center (Michigan, Indiana, Ohio), Growing Together (Florida), Possibilities Unlimited (Kentucky), SAFE (Florida), and Phoenix Institute for Adolescents (Georgia).

Sembler has never admitted to the problems with Straight’s methods. In fact, when he recently served as ambassador to Italy, he listed it among his accomplishments on his official State Department profile. Although all of the programs with the Straight name are closed, the nonprofit Straight Foundation that funded them still exists, though under a different name. It’s now called the Drug Free America Foundation, and it lobbies for drug testing and in support of tougher policies in the war on drugs.

One of the plaintiffs in the current case against WWASPS, 21-year-old Chelsea Filer, spoke to me when I was researching a TV segment on the industry. She told me that she was forced to walk for miles on a track in scorching desert heat with a 35-pound sandbag on her back. “You were not allowed to scratch your face, move your fingers, lick your lips, move your eyes from the ground,” she said. When she asked for a chapstick, “They put a piece of wood in my mouth and I had to hold it there for two weeks. I was bleeding on my tongue.” …

WWASPS has been linked with facilities Academy at Ivy Ridge (New York), Carolina Springs Academy (South Carolina), Cross Creek Programs (Utah), Darrington Academy (Georgia), Horizon Academy (Nevada), Majestic Ranch Academy (Utah), MidWest Academy (Iowa), Respect Camp (Mississippi), Royal Gorge Academy (Colorado), Spring Creek Lodge (Montana), and Tranquility Bay (Jamaica).

Although it has settled several lawsuits out of court, the organization has never publicly admitted wrongdoing. However, the U.S. State Department spurred Samoa to investigate its Paradise Cove program in 1998 after receiving “credible allegations of physical abuse,” including “beatings, isolation, food and water deprivation, choke-holds, kicking, punching, bondage, spraying with chemical agents, forced medication, verbal abuse and threats of further physical abuse.” Paradise Cove closed shortly thereafter. That same year, the Czech Republic forced the closure of WWASP-linked Morava Academy following employees’ allegations that teens were being abused. …

Police in Mexico have shut down three WWASP-linked facilities: Sunrise Beach (1996), Casa By The Sea (2004) and High Impact (where police videotaped the teens chained in dog cages). …

In 2005, New York’s Eliot Spitzer forced WWASP to return over $1 million to the parents of Academy at Ivy Ridge students, because the school had fraudulently claimed to provide legitimate New York high school diplomas. He fined Ivy Ridge $250,000 plus $2000 in court costs. A civil suit has been filed for educational fraud in New York as well, by a different law firm. …

The Romney campaign is aware of the WWASP suits, and should be familiar with the Straight suits. If not, it’s worth asking: does Romney support these types of tactics for at-risk youth? Or does he take the line the organizations founded by his fundraisers take—that these dozens of lawsuits are merely from bad kids who make up lies?”

Maia Szalavitz is the author of Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids (Riverhead).

Thanks to Carol F. in Amherst, MA for calling my attention to this article.

Here is the original version of the editorial that ran on Op-Ed News. They had an exclusive for at least 48 hours on the pithier version – and it ran five days ago.

Note the current status of the situation:

1. There is now a video that shows that Blackwater USA guards opened fire against civilians without provocation.
2. Blackwater is denying charges of arms smuggling.
3. Blackwater is back up and running in Iraq.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Finally, the government in Iraq has made a brilliant move. Because of this latest incident of civilian killings, they’ve “canceled Blackwater’s license” and demanded that all Blackwater employees leave Iraq. This is long overdue.

It’s true that the wording doesn’t work. Blackwater doesn’t appear to need a license from the Iraqi government to protect American officials. But if Blackwater still has immunity from crimes, and is free from prosecution in Iraq or here, then I really don’t see why the Iraqis cannot make a good case for their right to expel them from the country.

I don’t think any little phone call from Condi is going to change their minds.

Nothing should make them back down on this, no matter how they are pressured to do so. We have no case for supporting Blackwater’s presence. It would be just a silly show of power to insist.

Yes, the US is heavily dependent on heavily armed private contractors. Some claim that
private personnel on the US government payroll outnumber official US troops. At the same time, our government has granted them a special status with no formal accountability or oversight from Congress or anyone else. They have total immunity from Iraqi criminal prosecution (a provision that was only expected to last for a couple of months). It’s past time we changed that anyway.

“There’s no visibility on these contractors,” says Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill. “Meaning no clue how much money we’re spending. They are carrying out mission-sensitive activities with virtually no oversight whatsoever.”

No American security contractor has been prosecuted in the United States or Iraq, although there have been many incidents where such security contractors have shot and killed Iraqi civilians.

The incident reports were a whitewash, and nobody did anything about it,” he said, adding that there have been a few cases where Blackwater and other companies have fired workers for killing civilians, but those same workers were back in Iraq with another company in a few months.

It is widely known, both here and in Iraq, that the Sunni Fallujah massacre (note: new link added 9-23) was revenge for the killing of four Blackwater employees in March 2004. The death toll from that attack was severe – some claim there were as many as 100,000 casualties.

Given that, it must have been a slap in the face for Iraq to hear U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker praise Blackwater in his testimony to Congress last week.

Iraqis hate Blackwater, not just because of Fallujah, but because Blackwater is clearly immune – and irresponsible – and uncontrollable. Blackwater employees seem to be able to get away with whatever they feel like doing. They are a terrible face for America. Even other security companies dislike Blackwater.

“They are untouchable. They’ve shot up other private security contractors, Iraqi military, police and civilians,” said one security contractor, who declined to give his name because of the sensitivity of the issue.

One contractor described an incident three weeks ago in which a four-vehicle Blackwater convoy pushed through a crowded Baghdad street and pointed a gun at his team, even though they waved an American flag — an indicator used by security contractors to identify themselves to one another.

There have been several fatal shootings involving Blackwater since late last year. On Christmas Eve, a Blackwater employee walking in the Green Zone stopped by an Iraqi checkpoint and, after an argument, fatally shot an Iraqi guard for Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi, said an Iraqi official and a U.S. diplomat.

If I were an Iraqi, I wouldn’t care for Blackwater – at all. As an American, I don’t care for any of the private security forces, but Blackwater has become the iconic example for me of the results of “privatization” – lack of accountability or oversight or transparency, criminality/immunity, rampant corruption and war profiteering.

Of course, the US government backs the private forces in their shadow war – Blackwater more than any other company – but Iraq has the right to expel people from their own country. They can’t expel the military forces, but why can’t they kick out Blackwater?

This would give the federal government in Iraq a big boost. It might bring people together in Iraq if they felt that they do have a say in what happens in their own country – and I think ethics is on their side.

From the American side, this would refocus resentment on a single company rather than on the entire American presence. And it would show that we – sometimes – might mean what we say about our motives there. It would be a wise move all around to support Blackwater’s exit.

Jawad al-Bolani, the interior minister, said: “This is such a big crime that we can’t stay silent. Anyone who wants to have good relations with Iraq has to respect Iraqis.”
He told al-Arabiya television that foreign contractors “must respect Iraqi laws and the right of Iraqis to independence on their land. These cases have happened more than once and we can’t keep silent in the face of them”.

It’s about time that Iraq challenged the US over this blanket immunity deal – especially since Americans have done nothing about it.

Iraq’s national security advisor, Mowaffak Rubaie, said the Iraqi government should use the incident to look into overhauling private security guards’ immunity from Iraqi courts, which was granted by Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul Bremer III in 2003 and later extended ahead of Iraq’s return to sovereignty.

From 2004:

Order 17 gives all foreign personnel in the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority immunity from “local criminal, civil and administrative jurisdiction and from any form of arrest or detention other than by persons acting on behalf of their parent states.” U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer is expected to extend Order 17 as one of his last acts before shutting down the occupation next week, U.S. officials said. The order is expected to last an additional six or seven months, until the first national elections are held.

Any decent strategist could tell you that ousting Blackwater from Iraq is a win-win situation for both America and Iraq. The cost is small – Blackwater only has about a thousand people there now, and they are all over the rest of the world anyway. It wouldn’t even cut into their profit margin. Bush says he wants to see the government pull together – well, here’s a good start. It could end up being a real turning point, a gift to the Administration.

Are they too self-absorbed and arrogant to understand that?

Blackwater was founded in 1997 by Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL and son of a wealthy Michigan auto-parts supplier. The company, headquartered in Moyock, N.C., on a 7,000-acre compound, has deeply rooted political connections in Washington.

It counts former top CIA and Defense Department officials, including Cofer Black, former director of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, and Joseph Schmitz, former Pentagon inspector general, among its executives. Blackwater’s legal team once included Fred Fielding, now White House counsel, and now includes Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor who investigated the Monica Lewinsky and Whitewater scandals during the Clinton administration.

Erik Prince is also an extreme right-wing fundamentalist “Christian” mega-millionaire.

Maybe this administration is just too deep into the inherent corruption of the whole situation to be able to do the smart thing for everyone. Well, what will happen if they don’t? Think it through. The US can’t get away with another Fallujah now.

There is yet another solution. Is anyone at Blackwater smart enough to know when to move out? Here’s a hint: Now.

Recommended Viewing and Reading:

Jeremy Scahill describes the rise of Blackwater USA, the world’s most powerful mercenary army.

• Journalist Scahill Charts the Rise of Blackwater USA
• “Blackwater” Author describes the US civilian Militia Group’s relationship with BushCo. “Shadow War”
• Blackwater is part of Bremer’s Legacy: “The TROPHY Video”
• 
  U.S. rushes to smooth Iraq’s anger over Blackwater


Rice apologises for US security firm shootings

I hear “betray us” whenever they say General Petraeus’ name too, but yeah, it was a bit cheap to play on the name. Making a stink about the childishness of of that would be fair, but the comments I’m hearing are really over the top. And with all of the concentration on the word play, the actual point of the ad was lost.

Then there’s all this babbling about how the Democrats are “afraid” of irritating the members of Moveon.org. Makes ‘em sound like pansies, doesn’t it? Actually, one area where the Democrats have showed spine is in risking a lot of their voter base to try to compromise realistically in areas where there is significant disagreement and anger. Maybe they should be a little more afraid of irritating them sometimes….

But then consider everything the Republicans have to do in order not to “irritate” segments of their own voter base, especially the right-wing “Christian” voters. I doubt most imperialist neo-cons really care about abortion or homosexuality, but they throw out statements and bits of legislation. It keeps us fighting one another instead of realizing how we’re all getting robbed and losing any credibility in the world.

The bigger stink should be made about the brazen self-righteousness and hypocrisy of the ones pointing the finger, considering their own honored traditions in the history of smear (Ann Richards, Max Cleland, John Kerry, John McCain, etc etc).

Keith Olbermann makes a couple of very stunning points here about maintaining a tilted and anti-democratic playing field, and the politicizing of the military. To me, that’s the larger context and it isn’t being discussed nearly enough. If this story about MoveOn.org keeps on playing, then here are better “talking points” for the discussion.

Olbermann to Bush: “Your Hypocrisy Is So Vast” by Keith Olbermann, MSNBC “Countdown,” Thursday 20 September 2007

A reaction to Thursday’s press conference: the president was the one who interjected Gen. Petraeus into the political dialogue in the first place.

So the President, behaving a little bit more than usual, like we would all interrupt him while he was watching his favorite cartoons on the DVR, stepped before the press conference microphone and after side-stepping most of the substantive issues like the Israeli raid on Syria, in condescending and infuriating fashion, produced a big political finish that indicates, certainly, that if it wasn’t already – the annual Republican witch-hunting season is underway.

“I thought the ad was disgusting. I felt like the ad was an attack not only on General Petraeus, but on the U.S. Military.”

“And I was disappointed that not more leaders in the Democrat party spoke out strongly against that kind of ad.

“And that leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like Moveon.org or more afraid of irritating them, than they are of irritating the United States military.”

“That was a sorry deal.”

First off, it’s “Democrat-ic” party.

You keep pretending you’re not a politician, so stop using words your party made up. Show a little respect.

Secondly, you could say this seriously after the advertising/mugging of Senator Max Cleland? After the swift-boating of John Kerry?

But most importantly, making that the last question?

So that there was no chance at a follow-up?

So nobody could point out, as Chris Matthews so incisively did, a week ago tonight, that you were the one who inappropriately interjected General Petraeus into the political dialogue of this nation in the first place!

Deliberately, premeditatedly, and virtually without precedent, you shanghaied a military man as your personal spokesman and now you’re complaining about the outcome, and then running away from the microphone?

Eleven months ago the President’s own party, the Republican National Committee, introduced this very different kind of advertisement, just nineteen days before the mid-term elections.

Bin Laden.

Al-Zawahiri’s rumored quote of six years ago about having bought “suitcase bombs.”

All set against a ticking clock, and finally a blinding explosion and the dire announcement:

“These are the stakes – vote, November 7th.”

That one was ok, Mr. Bush?

Terrorizing your own people in hopes of getting them to vote for your own party has never brought as much as a public comment from you?

The Republican Hamstringing of Captain Max Cleland and lying about Lieutenant John Kerry met with your approval?

But a shot at General Petraeus, about whom you conveniently ignore it, was you who reduced him from four-star hero to a political hack, merits this pissy juvenile blast at the Democrats on national television?

Your hypocrisy is so vast that if we could somehow use it to fill the ranks in Iraq you could realize your dream and keep us fighting there until the year 3000.

The line between the military and the civilian government is not to be crossed.

When Douglas MacArthur attempted to make policy for the United States in Korea half a century ago, President Truman moved quickly to fire him, even though Truman knew it meant his own political suicide, and the deification of a General who history suggests had begun to lose his mind.

When George McClellan tried to make policy for the Union in the Civil War, President Lincoln finally fired his chief General, even though he knew McClellan could galvanize political opposition which he did when McClellan ran as Lincoln’s presidential opponent in 1864, nearly defeating our greatest president.

Even when the conduit flowed the other way and Senator Joseph McCarthy tried to smear the Army because it wouldn’t defer the service of one of McCarthy’s staff aides, the entire civilian and Defense Department structures, after four years of fearful servitude, rose up against McCarthy and said “enough” and buried him.

The list is not endless but it is instructive.

Air Force General LeMay – who broke with Kennedy over the Cuban Missile Crisis and was retired.

Army General Edwin Anderson Walker – who started passing out John Birch Society leaflets to his soldiers.

Marine General Smedley Butler – who revealed to Congress the makings of a plot to remove FDR as President and for merely being approached by the plotters, was phased out of the military hierarchy.

These careers were ended because the line between the military and the civilian is not to be crossed!

Mr. Bush, you had no right to order General Petraeus to become your front man.

And he obviously should have refused that order and resigned rather than ruin his military career.

The upshot is and contrary it is, to the MoveOn advertisement he betrayed himself more than he did us.

But there has been in his actions a sort of reflexive courage, some twisted vision of duty at a time of crisis. That the man doesn’t understand that serving officers cannot double as serving political ops, is not so much his fault as it is your good, exploitable, fortune.

But Mr. Bush, you have hidden behind the General’s skirts, and today you have hidden behind the skirts of ‘the planted last question’ at a news conference, to indicate once again that your presidency has been about the tilted playing field, about no rules for your party in terms of character assassination and changing the fabric of our nation, and no right for your opponents or critics to as much as respond.

That is not only un-American but it is dictatorial.

And in pimping General David Petraeus and in the violation of everything this country has been assiduously and vigilantly against for 220 years, you have tried to blur the gleaming radioactive demarcation between the military and the political, and to portray your party as the one associated with the military, and your opponents as the ones somehow antithetical to it.

You did it again today and you need to know how history will judge the line you just crossed.

It is a line thankfully only the first of a series that makes the military political, and the political, military.

It is a line which history shows is always the first one crossed when a democratic government in some other country has started down the long, slippery, suicidal slope towards a Military Junta.

Get back behind that line, Mr. Bush, before some of your supporters mistake your dangerous transgression, for a call to further politicize our military.